A whole range of variations in vocal quality and timbre betrays a similar close observation. In the Rose, Lady Gladnesse sings well and merrily, clearly and very sweetly. Troilus remembers how Criseyde sang with such melodious voice, so well, so pleasingly, so clear. In his despair, Troilus sings with soft voice, making his song of but few words—one stanza only, indeed: ‘O sterre, of which I lost have al the light’. Criseyde, in her embarrassment, can only hum. The Prioress, when she sang Divine Service, ‘Entuned in hir nose ful semely’. The aged Januarie attempts to sing for joy, but merely croaks, the loose skin shaking on his neck through the effort. In the Canterbury Tales, Alison, the Miller’s young wife, matches her general gaiety by singing in a voice as loud and as lively as any swallow on a barn. Absolon modulates his voice for wooing, singing quaveringly, like a nightingale. Chantecleer’s crowing is, according to the fox, singing worthy of any angel in heaven.

Bird song was a traditional element much exploited in descriptions of the magic garden, the ‘place apart’, in verse narratives in the tradition of the Rose; Machaut and Froissart in particular elaborate on this, but Chaucer, while modelling on such contemporaries, sometimes goes further than them. In the Rose, birds sing ‘layes of love’, well sounding, some high and some low—in other words in harmony of at least two voices. The Legend of Good Women Prologue gives a delightful fantasy of the birds on Saint Valentine’s Day, singing in defiance of the fowler who had destroyed so many of their kind in the Winter; this precedes the habitual ‘layes of love’. The birds sing clearly and ‘of oon accord’. In the Book of the Duchess, we read of the sweetness of their song. They sang ‘by note’ the most solemn service ever heard—reminiscent of the narrative Messe des Oiseaux by Jean de Condé, earlier in the century. Some sang high, others low and, again, all of one accord, in perfect harmony; no instrument or singing was half as sweet, no harmony so perfect as their sweet chant. Every bird gave of its best, with no feigning, seeking subtleties (‘crafty notes’) in the music. Despite strictures from the Church, brilliance and fragmentation were ever more cultivated by singers and composers, to dazzling effect by the time Chaucer heard them. In the Compleynt of Mars, it is again Saint Valentine’s Day: a ‘fowl’ sings to awaken all, for this is a day to celebrate and to choose a mate. In the Parlement of Foules, the birds, assembled on the branches, sing in harmony with angelic voices. A mysterious harmony of stringed instruments is also heard, and wind rustling through the leaves adds a further voice harmonizing with that of the birds. In the Knightes Tale, the busy lark, messenger of the day, salutes the grey morning in her song, first for Arcite and then again for Palamon. Not that the song of the birds is always high poetry in Chaucer: it can be a considerable source of fun. The Crane in the Parlement of Foules, for instance, sounds like a trumpet, and the goose, cuckoo and duck deafen the hearer with their cries: ‘kek, kek!’, ‘kukkow!’, ‘quek, quek!’ The story of the cockerel Chantecleer and his narrow escape from being devoured by a not-quite-crafty-enough fox, depends on the bird’s vanity about his voice: in all the land none could compare with him for crowing, and his voice was merrier than the church organ. With a wry smile, Chaucer explains to us that, at the time of which he writes, birds could speak and sing, which is how the cockerel could sing so sweetly ‘my lief is faren in londe’, a popular ditty no doubt, if it ever existed, but which echoes a traditional theme of courtly song: separation from the beloved, amour de loin. It is a particularly comic touch to have Chantecleer, a bird, telling his favourite hen, Pertelote, to listen to the blissful singing of the birds in the warm sunshine. In the Maunciples Tale, Phebus’ miraculous white crow, which sang and spoke, received little reward for its honesty, save losing its voice and being turned black.